Comment by ShabbyDoo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ShabbyDoo | Hacker News Reader

We just sent in our six year-old's Montessori application for first grade next year. Our suburban public school system has an amazing reputation, and the passing rates for standardized tests are some of the highest in the state. Sadly, our little Aspie with ADHD issues has already expressed his dread of first grade. He doesn't want to do "seatwork", "paperwork", or any of the other drudgery that our local district tells him is "his job". [Quotes indicate words used by teachers with the best of intentions.] I can't figure out the value of this pseudo-rigor. Maybe I'm unusual in my autodidactism, but I can't think of anything I know which I (1) find valuable and (2) learned by force.

I bought a K'NEX roller coaster kit and helped him put it together. At first, he didn't grok the pseudo 3D instructions or the way the pieces fit together. However, after an hour or so, he was rotating our partially assembled segments in his head to compare them to the illustrations. But, this doesn't count as rigorous seat work. Oh well.

Our school actually does an excellent job of avoiding the binary incentives of No-Child-Left-Behind and attempts to provide somewhat individualized instruction to students. Ohio has yet to adopt a value-added measurement scheme, and I wonder how our district would fare, especially if achievement was normalized for socio-economic status (the average household income is over $100K, a high number for Ohio).

We hope that the Montessori school's motivated teachers can use their freedom from mandated curriculum requirements, standardized testing, etc. to facilitate our son's exploration of what interests him. I don't care if his education is seen as incomplete, unbalanced, or otherwise non-standard so long as he grows to become a curious, thoughtful, and creative person. When has someone with these qualities ever failed because he had some perceived weakness in his childhood education?

>When has someone with these qualities ever failed because he had some perceived weakness in his childhood education? //

Define "failed". Failed to get a job, too right. Failed to fit in to society, check. Failed to be happy, seems to go with the territory(!?).

Will you excuse a short aside:I'm interested in the diagnosis of a 6yo as having ADHD - what procedures and tests were performed to come to that decision. In my, albeit limited, experience of primary aged (4-11yo) boys if they're not running around half the time like some sort of sugar rushing lunatic then they're the exception to the rule. Can he sit and watch a TV show for 20 minutes without leaving to do something else?

> Can he sit and watch a TV show for 20 minutes without leaving to do something else?

ADHD causes __attention_regulation__ difficulties. Many mistakenly see it as a simple lack-of-attention, but fail to realize that hyper-focus is also a common symptom.

I suggest reading the first few chapters of ``More Attention, Less Deficit'' to gain a basic understanding of ADHD.

I'm naive about ADHD but not that naive.

I was specifically interested in the TV part rather than trying to suggest that if they could concentrate [on TV] that was asymptomatic of any disorder that might have been diagnosed.

Thanks for the reading suggestion.

At what point does ignoring people (or bodily needs, or whatever) because you're focussed [which is genuinely something I do] become "hyper focus" and how is one differentiated from the other diagnostically?

If you think that ADHD boys are running around half the time like some sort of sugar rushing lunatic then you do not know what ADHD actually is.

It is not generally a problem of too much energy and lack of focus. Rather it is a problem of inappropriate focus, frequently very intense. For instance my nephew would get so interested in whatever he was doing that he would fail to realize that he needed to pee, and then after he peed his pants he would get very upset that people were making him change his pants when he wanted to do something else.

It becomes a problem in school when children are unable to follow repeated directions because they are unaware that directions have been given, because their interest has been caught by something - anything - else.

Disclaimer: I am the parent of a 7 year old who has been identified as likely having ADHD, though I have not yet done the official screening.

Sounds like I have ADHD.

>identified as likely having ADHD //

Yes this is the part I'm interested in, what's the diagnostic process you've gone through?

He was identified as having a front lisp, so went in for speech therapy evaluation. During that evaluation he was found to have the speech impediment, and was flagged as requiring further screening for occupational therapy and ADHD. We have not yet done that screening.

My understanding is that an important part of that screening is a patient history and impressions from caregivers. Every caregiver has identified the same thing. He's plenty smart and has a great attention span for what interests him, but simply doesn't follow direction. Not in a, "kids don't listen" sort of way. But in the kind of way which causes the teacher in parent-teacher conferences to get all serious and spend the session talking about how she has more problems with him than with the rest of a class of 24 kids.

Having talked with my sister, whose son had very severe ADHD, I've been forced to admit that the symptoms fit. (My son is clearly not as severe though.) But it isn't official until he gets the official screening for it.

As for what to do about it, my sister spoke highly of cognitive therapy. She understands our resistance to drugs, had the same herself, but points out that drugs are optional and only needed as a temporary stopgap to give therapy a chance. If you don't need them to make therapy work, you don't do them. If you do need them, once therapy has progressed far enough, you can drop the drugs.

Thanks for a full response. Really appreciated. Just one more quick question if you will:

Do you recognise yourself in the symptoms your son has, does it look like an inherited trait to you (I know that's not at all scientific). Do you have any suspicions for why this affliction might appear to be so prevalent amongst children now (other than observer bias or similar discrepancies).

There is definitely a hereditary component to it. And yes, the shoe might have fit for me as well.

My suspicion is that over time we're adjusting to having fewer kids and more attention/kid, and so are noticing and diagnosing problems that in previous generations went unnoticed.

Without ADHD meds, our son often can't concentrate long enough to finish a sentence. He starts one, shifts to another, and repeats. Often, in the mornings before his meds kick-in, he lacks sufficient impulse control to avoid hitting his mother (also my wife -- the English language seems to lack a single word which denotes both relationships) or threatening her with physical violence. The differences in behavior are striking in their contrast. While I don't like the idea of "medicating away" a problem which could be solved via better parenting, I don't see how we can possibly be effective parents if we had to spend most of our time with him (1) protecting his little brother from his aggression, (2) protecting physical possessions, or (3) attempting to correct behaviors which himself seems to wish he did not have but can not stop due to lack of impulse control. On meds, we can do what normal parents get to do.

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